LONG BEACH : World’s First Nuclear Cruiser to Be Scrapped
After three decades in which it downed enemy aircraft, intercepted drug-runners and policed troubled waters, the U.S. nuclear cruiser Long Beach, the world’s first, is on its final voyage: to the scrapheap.
The cruiser is being called home after 33 years of active duty, part of the Navy’s effort to reduce its fleet to 330 ships.
Currently patrolling in the Caribbean, the Long Beach will head to Norfolk, Va., for a formal decommissioning ceremony in July. After its nuclear reactors are shut down and dismantled, the cruiser will be towed to a scrap yard in Washington’s Puget Sound.
When it was commissioned in September, 1961, the 721-foot ship was the world’s first cruiser powered by nuclear reactors. It also was the first warship with a guided-missile battery, and the first naval cruiser designed for the United States after World War II.
In 1986, the Long Beach made the first successful launch of a Tomahawk cruise missile.
During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the Long Beach served as the U.S. flagship.
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